I will be checking out liveries and aircraft that are very familiar to you. Along with notes for flight reports, I will be photographing the beverage service and watching the pre-takeoff flap deployment.

Is there any chance that I will get to experience genious airmanship from the NSGPOTM?

Strangely enough, you miss me by one day. I'm flying into BHM on the 31st for a short layover and flying out on the 1st at O' dark forty five. It's a garbage 3 day trip that starts onthe 30th and I've been trying to dump it for weeks, but can't find anything to replace it. The only saving grace is that I have the prior 10 days off, and after the trip I start vacation (always bid for Super Bowl vacation). On the 30th I go TPA via DTW, but If I find myself in ATL for a reroute, I''ll drop a quick PM.

Takeoff flaps were set before any forward movement. Hosties- 1 attractive, 2 average, 1 pretty senior. The captain (Bill?) seemed like he wanted to work for Southwest, he cracked a number of jokes, "ok, we’ve taxied the first mile, there’s only 473 to go, Corby’s flying the big jet this leg, the computer has us for 1 hour and one minute, Corby say’s he’ll do it in an hour even"…They even powered up on the taxiway and did the SWA sweeping, accelerating 60-degree turn onto runway 29 instead of a square-get the full length and hang the tail back over the threshold type of runway entry. The weather was interesting: a moderate amount of clouds around, but for the most part, we had good views of the ground. Got a great view of the Ohio-Mississippi confluence, Paducah, KY and Kentucky and Barkley lakes. The autopilot was goofy and on two occasions had us oscillating nose up-nose down on about a 3-second period. It was gentle, but you could feel it and it ran upwards of 10 cycles.

ATL-BHM

I had never noticed this before but the STL-ATL plane had two seats on the left, three on the right whereas the ATL-BHM plane had three on the left, two on the right. (I figure they probably rotate them during major maintenance times/sarcasm) Takeoff flaps were set before any forward movement. Hosties were rather nominal. The flight was 26 minutes. We climbed for 9 minutes, cruised for about 2 minutes and spend the rest of the time working down. We landed on 20-something. It was night and I could not see a whole lot, but it seemed we were dipping below some terrain off to the right…

General comments- after some recent unpleasant flights on a tightly configured 757, I have to compliment Delta and their newer thin seats and seat pitch. Don’t get me wrong- it wasn’t roomy but at least I fit as opposed to some more recent 757 rides. The MD-80 also was smooth and quiet!

The return was “immediately” after the “snowstorm” that “destroyed” both Atlanta and Birmingham- Delta was listing the flights as “on time”…however flightaware was showing minimal traffic out of ATL…around four hours before flight time, the cancellation came…got to go home by driving.

Maybe the MD-90 from STL was quieter than the -88...But where you sit has an even bigger influence on what you hear and I was over the wing vs. behind the wing on the two flights so I cannot say with any certainty.

Maybe the MD-90 from STL was quieter than the -88...But where you sit has an even bigger influence on what you hear and I was over the wing vs. behind the wing on the two flights so I cannot say with any certainty.